Bush vetoes health and education bill ............

...... Since winning re-election, Bush has sought to cut the labor, health and education measure below the prior year level. But lawmakers have rejected the cuts. The budget that Bush presented in February sought almost $4 billion in cuts to this year's bill.

Democrats responded by adding $10 billion to Bush's request for the 2008 bill.

The $471 billion defense budget gives the Pentagon a 9 percent, $40 billion budget increase........
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071113/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush

Which side is Bush on?
As everybody knows the result of war is a destruction.

Bush surely is handing the victory to the democrats. Sadly for all Americans, Bush has turned himself and his party into the "shame stock" of America with his and theirs Anti-American leadership.

 

To be fair there is more to vetoing the name of a bill than being against it. The way politicians stuff bills full of crap I am glad to see when for a good reason a president or the house goes against something such as this.

I will have to read into the bill further to draw a conclusion at this time if I support Bush or not.

However the name of a bill or overall purpose is not the only thing to consider, look at what's inside of it, not just the name.

 

Cons love to say things like that. "ooh, see somebody who is not supposed to get help is getting it unlawfully...."
Cons can't cover up their greed and selfishness all the time with lame excuses.

 

Yeah because putting bills through without reguard for the $$$ or other add ons is the best thing to do.

It happens on both sides of the aisle..

However

Unnecessary spending, but sign it in.. WTF

 

One cannot be a good president and have less than 50% APPROVAL RATING. Bush has less than 30%.
With this kind of a rating Bush should be in hiding .....

 

I am FAR from being pro Bush. I think he's one of, if not the worst president in history.

 

It is true, senators from both sides try to push other agendas but including things that are almost off-topic into other bills. Wasn't there a spending bill a couple of years ago that also tried to set a deadline on the war in Iraq? I could be wrong, I was just thinking that there was something like that in there.

Lets be honest, Democrats are typically for higher taxes and cutting government agencies, Republicans are in favor of lower taxes. An equal balance between the two is needed.

 

If the politicians including the President and both parties in congress had wanted to pass this health/education/welfare bill they would have easily. The difference is $10 billion which they all know is small potatoes.

There is a lot of hot air on both sides of the aisle going on now about fiscal responsibility, America's interests etc., where the money is going etc.

But it is emphasizing politics rather than solutions.

What a waste.

Frankly Bush could have gotten involved on the Congressional side and worked toward a solution.

What a waste of American time.

 

Democrats never cut government agencies. Prior to this recent Republican administration, the GOP had a strong libertarian soul for cutting down big government in favor of more individual choices and liberty.

Republicans are *supposed* to be for small government and low taxes. These are your Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan type Republicans.

 

Who says we wanted government hand outs in free health care and free education? I'd prefer free housing and free cars or at least my 15% of income that goes to Social Security staying there until I hit 72 or whatever the retirement age will be. Geeesh!

 

That's what they once stood for, but once your in power you tend to want to keep power and in doing so you reward people and group who fund your elections and vote for you and its done on both sides of the aisle.

 

That's what they stand for again.

 

only the rich should be educated

 

just another pork filled bill that the democrats are trying to pass.

 

I tried to give a fair handed effort at discussion on this topic above. But as the typical partisan comments from the typically ignorantly partisan inevitably way in it is hopeless to try and act nonpartisan in the face of ignorance of facts and recent history.

1. The greatest growth of pork (entitlements) occurred between about 1995 and 2006. That is the period when Republicans dominated Congress. The amount of Congressional Pork roughly tripled or quadrupled. During the periods of 2001-2006, our friend, Mister fiscal responsability, George Bush, never once vetoed a spending bill. Not once. He and his friends in Congress just decided to spend away. Growth in govt spending during that period was at twice the rate that growth in govt spending occurred during the Clinton administration. Twice as high.

2. As the Comptroller General of the United States, and head of the Government Accountability Office, David Walker is currently saying
the following about the number 1 expense item that the Bush administration pushed through in 2003--The Prescription Drug Benefit Law:.....

When this bill came before Congress the Administration pushed it forward as a $400 billion cost.

After it was passed by an arm twisting pharmacy favoring Republican Congress news came out almost immediately that anticipated costs were over $500 million then $700 million leading to estimates of $1.2 billion.

Subsequent to the debate and passing of the law...Richard S. Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, said administration officials had threatened to fire him if he disclosed his belief in 2003 that the drug benefit would cost as much as $600 billion.

The bill allows private insurers to negotiate lower pharmaceutical costs but specifically prohibited the govt. the largest buyer of drugs for those for whom it cares, the right to negotiate lower costs. Republican Congressman were stunned at this law.


For Bush to make any claim of fiscal responsibility after years of outrageous spending....and turn it into a political battle, is the most rediculous comment ever from the biggest spender in the history of the United States.

Of course a highly partisan comment like that of d16 above illustrates that the Bushites will turn any topic into a partisan review no matter how rediculous and how pitiful the comments are.

During the debate in Congress, the Administration, like administrations before, and as it has done in the past had every opportunity to inject themselves into the Congressional debates to try and work out a compromise spending agreement before the bill was passed and agreed to by both houses.

Not doing that at all was a pure play to create a poltical firestorm over something that should have been agreed to before it reached the presidents desk.

The big spender likes to huff and puff and speak tough....and ultimately steal from the American taxpayer.

 

if you will read my posts instead of just always calling me partisan, then you will see that I don't like any pork filled bill. Bush's non-use of the veto during his first few years was a large mistake in my opinion. He grew the government to sizes that it should have never been at. So I advise you to rethink before you call me a Bushite and extreme partisan...I am glad that Bush is finally veto'ing some of the rediculous spending that congress has been allowed to get away with.

 

What is non-partisan about this statement?

 

I seem to recall the GOP passing a lot of pork bills in Congress prior to 2006, and the veto of the POTUS was never used.

One of my heroes is Mark Sanford. He's taken a lot of criticism in his first few years in South Carolina, and most of his vetoes have been overturned by his own party in the State House, but he has stood for principle, and he has turned that state's economy around, removed the socialistic bent and brought true economic freedom to the citizens.

It takes a man of principle to vote against his party. There are few of them running, and none of them are front runners.

What does this say about us? We bitch and moan about government pork, mistakes, and lack of accountability, but on election day, we line right back up with people who lack any moral or ethical foundation.

 

Here is one where I agree with you guerilla.

The 2 parties in office spend more time being democrats or republicans then Americans....or more importantly American's elected leaders.

These trivial whining comments about pork are just that....trivial comments. Congressional entitlements, typically described as pork, make up a relatively small amount of the budget, but they get consistently blamed for screwing up America's economy.

Not to long ago (1.5 months ago) a thread here tried to highlight the costs of the war in Iraq and the impact of entitlements and finally ways to deal with it.

It was not surprising to me that the neocon element wouldn't take on the issue. They love to blame pork.

Actually I believe it is part of an issue with politics of both parties that block better legislation.

As shown in this post pork as defined as congressional entitlements most recently equaled somewhere between $30-50 billion a year. Big on its own right, but relatively small compared to things like the entire budget and the cost of the war in Iraq.

The huge range in part shows how hard it is to find and identify.

Beyond that though, there is a political process between democrats and republicans to emphasize blame, not get things done, not focus on critical issues, and dramatically, unlike a business, defer from making strong decisions based on reason on where govt spending should go.

Its a political process dilemma. Its been going on for years, and of course it is going on right now. After years of never vetoing continuously bloated spending bills the President is vetoing every spending bill in sight. What cr@p. If as with any important legislation if he chose his congressional people could be fully engaged in the process of bill preparation and acceptable levels could be reached before it hit the president's office. I'm sure both the President and the Democrats are adverse to doing this....but most critical legislation is dealt with in this manner.

On any issue he felt strongly about Bush's congressional liasons were intimately involved in the process.

But politicians won't focus on priorities or solving problems. Most of them like to play the business of fighting over which party is in the majority.

Voters lose out in the process.

It would be refreshing if they would look at expenditures on a large scale and focused on priorities, established compromises and dealt with solving big issues not blaming one another and creating stalemates for political show.

 

Excellent post btw.
It is simply shameful how each side bounces back and forth.

Such as when the dems were not in power the republicans used the mantra 'if you don't fund the troops you're not supporting them' all the time in the background saying the dems are for the war because if they were not they could simply vote to defund the war.

Now the real Irony the republicans are the ones against the funding, they supposedly have a 'reason' but before when they were in power according to them there simply was no reason to not vote for the funds. It's shameful in my book, but I'm sure most of them will be so blind to their hypocrisy they will not be able to see it.